My Story

Part 1

JOURNEY TO PRIESTHOOD

by Fr. David May, Madonna House priest

My first memory, which occurred in 1954 when I was almost three, was a joyous one. It was summer in Maryland—beautiful, hot, humid weather—and my mother was giving me a bath in the kitchen sink. I just remember looking out at the back yard and being filled with a sense of security and joy in "summerness."

I have loved summer ever since and see in it an image of communion with God in childlike trust and peace.

My father, who was in the U.S. Navy, was released from the service less than a year after that, and my sister was born. We moved to Detroit, Michigan where my father had grown up.

The following few years, from the time when I was four until I was eight, were years of darkness and pain.

The long and the short of the story is that my parents’ marriage did not work out. Of those years I remember almost nothing but darkness, pain, disillusionment, and especially fear, tremendous fear, and also confusion and poverty.

I also had during that time some experience of commitment to God and to the Church. One especially vivid memory was of my mother with my little sister in a stroller and me trudging to church through snow and slush. Either we didn’t have a car or it wasn’t working, but through this experience, the importance of church was really impressed on me.

I guess it goes without saying that it was from my mother that I principally received the gift of faith and the seriousness of being committed to it. She, incidentally, was not raised a Catholic. She converted when she got married.

The darkness of those days affected me deeply. Filled with fear, I was unwilling to try new things, especially mechanical things or things that you do with your hands.

I also made some decisions at that time, decisions that stayed within me: I won’t drink. I won’t hurt anybody like we’ve been hurt. I’m going to be good to people. I’m going to help people. I won’t bring hurt and pain to people. I will try to bring something else, but I don’t know what that something else is.

I was a very serious little boy, much more serious than I am now. I was reacting to what I had experienced with my father.

My parents got a divorce in 1959, and my mother took my sister and me back to Maryland to live with her family. So I was raised with my mother and grandparents.

We arrived in Maryland on Father’s Day, June 21, 1959, the first day of summer. There was a big welcoming dinner for us, and that dinner symbolized for me the return of summer, the end of war within the family and the return of peace to our lives.

It was also a complete break with my father. Nineteen years were to pass before I was to see him again.

In Maryland I went to the Catholic school for the first time. I must have been ripe for religion because I was profoundly influenced by the Catholic atmosphere of both the parish church and the school.

We were a Catholic enclave (1% of the population of the town) in a Protestant area. All my mother’s family was Methodist as well.

The Sisters of Mercy put into my head the possibility of a religious vocation. They were putting that possibility into everybody’s head, starting with third grade, but in my head, it stuck. From the age of 8, I had the notion that I might be called to be a priest. Although its power came and went, it never left me.

Two words describe my experience of Church at that time: joy and guilt.

Jansenism was alive and well in my parish. Guilt and condemnation, hellfire and damnation were regular themes, and we were taught in school to make long examinations of conscience.

We were taught about all kinds of sins, and many of them I didn’t know. But I was scrupulous and felt pretty sure I had committed them. I often felt I was in a state of mortal sin.

But at the same time I loved the church and the priests, and I became an altar boy when I was 11.

My mother recently sent me an excerpt from our parish bulletin at home. The current pastor had pulled out of the file, the list of rules for altar boys from 1962, the year I had become one.

There were "ten commandments." If you don’t remember the atmosphere of those pre-Vatican II days or never knew them, they’ll give you some idea of what it was like.

1) Silence in the sacristy and church at all times. Speak only when spoken to by one of the priests.

2) Be clean both inwardly and physically, hair cut and combed, shoes shined and no white or tennis shoes. Hands and nails cut. Cassock and surplice must fit. Hands must always be folded when not holding something. Knees erect. Never, never look at the congregation.

3) Be prompt for all appointments. 15 minutes before the scheduled service.

4) Know your Latin responses by heart. (Incidentally I had the fastest Confiteor in the 6th grade when we were tested with a stopwatch.)

5) Know your actions perfectly. Don’t depend on the other fellow.

6) Don’t be sending signals to one another.

7) Never call the rectory. If you can’t fulfill your appointment, you get a replacement.

8) If possible, please wear a white shirt and tie. No bow ties.

9) Don’t wear jeans. They are for the playground.

10) Any infraction of the above rules will be dealt with accordingly.

I loved it! Because once you got all the rules down, you were in. (Just like in the Church at that time, if you obeyed all the rules, your salvation was assured.)

As an altar boy you were in with the priests. You were special to them; you were friends with them. And there was a beauty to serving Mass.

My scrupulosity and guilt, however, were not pleasant, and they were not easy to shake. But one day when I was fifteen, God freed me from it, though I can’t explain how.

I remember sitting upstairs in our house that day burdened with guilt, and feeling that I was in mortal sin. (And when you’re a teenager, it’s more complicated and worse.) Suddenly I was shaken with this thought: I’m only human and it’s ok. And the whole thing fell off me.

It was pure grace. I cried and wept and, phew, it was gone! No more guilt. I haven’t been scrupulous since. Conscientious, yes; scrupulous, no.

I went to a public high school, and those were not easy years. I did some of the normal teenager things, but I didn’t do them all. I didn’t drink because of my decisions when I was seven.

I also didn’t go out with the crowd, because the crowd didn’t necessarily get good grades, and I wanted good grades. I also thought they were flippant. So I was somewhat of a loner, though not completely.

Summers I worked on a farm. The farmer I worked for was a wonderful Methodist man who was very kind and loved to work with teenage boys. So it was a marvelous experience and I loved it.

I learned that I had it in me to get to work at 7 a.m. and to work until 6 p.m. with only a lunch break, every day, and sometimes even until 9 or 10 p.m. It built up my confidence and it put me in touch with the earth.

I was a teenager in the 1960s, a time when everything was being questioned. So, not surprisingly, towards the end of my teenage years, I too began searching and questioning if God was real.

But by the time I began college, I was going to daily Mass. I don’t know where the idea came from, but I reasoned it out this way: I’m not sure any more if Jesus is real, but I’m going to do an experiment. (I have something of a scientific bent.)

If the Eucharist is not real, then if I receive it for a time, nothing will happen. If it is real, then something will change. I’ll give it a period of time and we’ll see what happens. Not just a month; that’s not long enough. I’ll give it a longer time and see what happens. So I started receiving communion every day.

To be continued

My Dear Family

HE HAS CHOSEN YOU

by Catherine Doherty

Catherine wrote this letter in the 1960s to a young man on the eve of his ordination.

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The engraved and beautiful invitation to your ordination has arrived. Thank you for asking me to your great day. Unfortunately distance and the duties of our lay apostolate will preclude the possibility of my being present in person. But rest assured that I will be there in spirit, and that the whole day, beginning with my Mass and Communion, will be for you.

But frankly it breaks my heart not to be there. It is an infinite grace to be present at that eternal, incomprehensible, ineffable miracle of God’s mercy that allows one to behold an ordinary young man ascending three little steps of an altar and descending themya priest.

What a chasm is crossed in that short space of time! Take yourself: you will seem to be the same person who went up to the altar, but you are not. Your lips have not changed their contours, but now, at their bidding, bread will be changed into the Body of Christ and wine into his Blood.

Your hands still have the same shape, but now they have such new and stupendous powers.

You make the Sign of the Cross, and the devils tremble and retire before the awesome power. Creatures of God become holier under their blessing. Water, oil, and inanimate objects become sacramentals. Sicknesses of body and soul sometimes depart before their healing touch. Sinful souls are made pure again, and fearful hearts courageous. Infinite is the power of blessing and healing that your hands impart.

The sacraments are now yours to dispense. Baptism, that will make children of men into children of God; Confession, that will restore our lives to Christ; the Eucharist, Bread of the saints, without which we cannot reach our goal, the Beatific Vision; Matrimony, which gives our souls greater strength and endurance, the Sacrament of the Sick, which often heals us, and which prepares us to cross the threshold of death into everlasting life.

Your voice has not changed, but from now on, when you speak in the name of him who sent you, people will listen. For as an apostle of Christ you have become a teacher of divine truths.

Do you realize, dear friend, the immense grace that is yours? I think you must. So many years went into preparing yourself for it. Yet, can we mortals ever fully comprehend it? I wonder. To me an ordination is the most visible sign of invisible grace ever conceived.

Behold yourself just for a second. You walk the earth a man among men, but your head, like St. John’s, rests on Christ’s breast. Alone amongst us, you hear, even as he did, the heartbeats of God. For you are now all his and infinitely beloved by him. For you have not chosen him, he has chosen you, and his love is upon you for all men to see.

To do this you will have to become what Christ meant you to be—all things to all men. You will be a dispenser of the sacraments, a minister of his truths, a teacher applying these truths to daily living, a director of souls, a father of the fatherless, of friend and foe alike.

These things you will have to do and be at all timesTwhen your soul is in the utter darkness of the dark night of God; when your soul is on the white summit of infinite joy; when loneliness crushes you under its relentless heel; when the grace of your calling overwhelms you with its ecstasy; when you are young and strong, middle-aged, weary and tempted seemingly beyond endurance, or old and almost spent.

Look at your road now, my friend, now as you descend the three short steps of God’s altar, a priest. Look at it well and, as you begin, sing that alleluia of utter surrender that begins now and will change you slowly (if you allow it to do so), into another Christ, for that is what we laity really expect you to be.

But don’t be afraid. You can and will do it because you are not alone. You are his chosen one, and he is with you unto the end of time. His strength is yours; his powers are yours. His love is upon you. In him, through him, and with him, you can and will do great things.

Daily, at your bidding, the Lord of Hosts will obediently descend and become your Food and ours, your Strength and ours, your Life and ours. Angels tremble and veil their faces, but you—you hold him, the Lord of creation, obedient as a little child, in your hands!

You walk in grace. It surrounds you like a shining mantle. You may think of me, perhaps, as just an emotional woman, but I am not. I am just an ordinary Catholic who loves priests, because she ever so dimly, understands what they are, and so beholds the grace that is in them. And you can, too, if you take time to look.

And try to see us, the laity, as we are. Do not think of us only as parishioners, or as numbers to be put down in your reports to your bishop. We are people, souls. We are men and women, young people and old, and children. We are sick or well. But above all we are human beings. Please look at us as such.

Add to this that we are living in terrible times. That we, the laity, are bearing the whole weight of these dark days of ours. See our breadwinners bowed down under the weight of crushing taxes, of utter insecurity, of high prices, and of constant fear of war. See our mothers worried about their sons and daughters.

Look at our youth, restless and moorless, living in the midst of a world gone mad with lust, love of power, materialism, secularism, paganism, and atheism. Behold our children growing up in all of this, and take pity on them!

You alone have the words of eternal life. Give them to us without hesitation and fear, but make them plain. Remember, we want to know the verities of God, but we, the great masses of people, are unlearned and humble.

Speak to us in our own language, and apply these stupendous verities to our everyday living. We need you so, for you are for us a sign of hope left in this hopeless, crazy world, spinning into perdition so fast that our hearts are well-nigh breaking at the sight of it.

Show us how to become saints in a world dedicated to the prince of darkness. Teach us holiness step by step, as your would teach a child to walk. Remember, we have been given over to you by God himself to be made children of light. Be our light!

Teach us how to pray. Don’t be afraid to give us strong meat. We may be the martyrs of tomorrow, and we will need strong meat. The days for gruel and pap are past.

Teach us how to love, for it is love and love alone, the great love of God, that may yet save this world from the hate that is encompassing it on all sides.

But to do this you must know how to pray. You must show us how you love; there is no other way. And when you have done this, take us by the hand and show us how to apply both prayer and love to our workdays and our rest days. Point out to us again and again who is our neighbor, and don’t forget to remind us that that includes our enemies as well.

Open to us the shortcut to Jesus. Lead us to him through Mary. Don’t forget to put into our hands the slender thread of the rosary. It is now holding our tragic world above an abyss that yawns below it, and may yet, with your help, lift it from its infinite and dark depths.

And please, remember me before his face, just once, on this glorious day of your ordination.

A PASTOR’S STORY

by Fr. Tom Rowland,

Madonna House Priest

In 1964, I was the contented pastor of a small country parish in West Texas. One day during the early months of that year I read in an article in our diocesan newspaper that a new parish was being created by a religious order in the heart of the biggest city in the diocese.

As I glanced at the architect’s drawings of the large complex they were planning to build, I casually thought, "That’s nice," and promptly forgot about it.

Then on Holy Thursday our bishop told me that he had decided to make that parish a diocesan one, and was appointing me the pastor! I was to go there in ten days.

My immediate reaction was, "Whoa! This is not for me." It was going to be a big parish about 35,000 parishioners for a start. It certainly looked like more than I could handleeespecially since I wasn’t fluent in Spanish. But I was assigned, and I went.

My opinion of the situation was vividly confirmed at the end of my first month, when a poor elderly lady stopped me in the parking lot of the old chapel. She told me in Spanish, and in no uncertain terms, what she thought of the bishop.

He had taken away "the good, holy order priests who had served them so well for so long" and sent instead a diocesan, a secular priest. "And everybody knows that they are no equal to the wonderful order priests!"

And he hadn’t even sent a Mexican! "He sent you! You are not one of us. You’re a gringo, a blondie! And you can’t even speak Spanish correctly! We don’t know you, and we don’t want you here!"

Then she stopped, took a deep breath and asked, "Could you lend me five dollars?" So I pulled out my wallet and gave her five dollars. She then took out her pledge envelope for the building fund, put the five dollars in it, and handed it to me!

This little old lady continued to "pay her pledge" the same way every month for the rest of the year. By the end of the time, she did admit that maybe there was some faint possibility that I might be worth something.

I must admit that in that parish my pride and ambition were taking over. By God, I was going to make a success of this assignment, no matter what some of the people said!

But though I said, "By God," the reality was that I was relying much more on Tom Rowland than I was on God.

But in spite of this, God did allow some measure of success. By the Lent of 1966, the new church building, which seated over 1000, was completed, and things were going fairly well. I was starting to feel that maybe I’m was getting somewhere. Notice: I was getting somewhere.

Well, the Saturday after Easter, as I finished the third wedding Mass that morning, I made it to the sacristy and collapsed and was brought to the hospital.

They brought me a psychiatrist, who prescribed heavy doses of Valium and gave me strict orders to find someone else to take care of the parish. The only thing I was allowed to do was to say Mass. And I was to stay, not in the rectory but in the home of a wonderful family who were to make sure that I follow his orders.

After a while of this treatment, I attended a Diocesan Catholic Women’s convention, and people there were remarking "Oh Father, you look so peaceful," and "It looks like the treatment is helping you." Those words made me cringe.

After I got home I went to my personal doctor, a general practitioner who was a good friend of mine. I told him what happened at the convention. "Everyone said that I am so peaceful, but I am not peaceful at all. I am nothing but a robot. I hate this walking around in a haze. I don’t feel anything. I want to be alive! I want my life to be meaningful."

He asked me what I was doing for recreation. I answered that the psychiatrist had decided that the best exercise for me was bowling because knocking down of the pins would help get the aggression out of me. But everybody works during the day, and there was nobody to bowl with me.

"Fortunately I’m ambidextrous," I told him. "So I bowl against myself"left hand against right. Sometimes ‘leftie’ wins and sometimes ‘rightie’. I’m bored sick."

"Well, what do you want to do for recreation?" he asked. "I want to start flying again, but I can’t do that while taking these drugs." Flying a small plane was what I really enjoyed.

So my doctor, who just happened to be a Federal Aviation Administration medical examiner, told me to stop taking the Valium and come back in a month. By then the drug would be out of my system, and he would reinstate my medical certificate.

He told me that I should fly, preferably with another pilot, whenever I needed to relax. He also said that I should begin to do some work and let the family I was living with be the judge as to when I was trying to do too much.

Then he said, "Father, you have told me any number of times that after your annual retreat the retreat master always says to you, ‘Tom, why don’t you stop trying to do everything yourself? Why don’t you let God do something?’ You need to slow down, and you need to become like young Samuel. Turn to the Lord and say, Speak Lord, your servant is listening (1 Sam 3:9).

I want you to make the decision that before you do anythingamake any decision whatsoevercyou stop and ask God what he wants you to do."

In theory I had known that this is the way to live my Christian life, as well as my priestly one, but to have my doctor tell me…. Well it changed my life.

Gradually I learned that it didn’t matter whether I pleased all the people in the parish or not. It didn’t matter whether I proved to them or to myself that I was capable of doing the job. What mattered was doing God’s will.

The strange thing is that when I finally began to see this and try it, a new spirit came over the parish. The people stopped doing what I told them to just because I was telling them to do it. Instead we began working together trying to do what God wanted us to do.

The parish came alive. We set up neighborhood groups and through the groups many new parish activities were started. We were all working together for the honor and glory of God.

I still had as much work to do as before—in fact, even more! I was still working long hours. I was still tired and still became disappointed when things didn’t work out the way I had hoped. I still felt inadequate because I didn’t speak Spanish well. But now I knew that none of that really mattered.

I wish I could say that I have never fallen back into that trap of self-importance. That would make a nice ending to this story, but it wouldn’t be true.

Like everyone else, I need to keep coming back to that great lesson that Catherine gave us: what we do matters, but not very much. Knowing who we are, creatures dependent on God for everything, and living in loving relationship with him, is everything.

Word Made Flesh

NOT GOOD ENOUGH?

by Deacon Paul Lissandrello, associate deacon of MH

The following is a reflection on John 6:1-15, the story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the Gospel for Sunday, July 27th.

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I had just returned home from Sunday Mass, and my wife and I were preparing lunch, when the phone rang. It was one of the music ministers in our parish.

She was in tears as she explained that, for the many years that she had been involved in this ministry, she had had the feeling that she just wasn’t good enough, and that what she was giving God just wasn’t good enough.

I am a permanent deacon and had just preached the homily at Mass. The reason she was calling was to let me know that my homily had touched her heart and made her feel that the gift she was faithfully offering to God every weekrher gift of singing and playing at Masshwas truly valued by him.

What had struck me when I had meditated on this Sunday’s gospel, that of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and what I had shared with the congregation, was this: Jesus chose to use something ordinary, the humble food brought by a simple boy, for his miracle.

We know nothing about that boy, not even his name, except that he was obviously interested enough in what Jesus had to say to go and hear him speak. Perhaps he was even expecting to see the Lord to perform a miracle.

He came with food, five barley loaves and two fish, presumably for himself and perhaps a few others. Then suddenly the Master asked him for this food.

The boy gave it to him and Jesus used this gift to feed vast numbers of hungry people. Not only this, but he used that boy’s five barley loaves and two fishes to perform a miracle, a miracle which was a sign to them of Jesus’ supernatural power. (This is undoubtedly the Prophet who is to come (Jn 6:14), they said.)

That story even got into the Gospel and has been told century after century. Christ certainly did something extraordinary through that boy and his loaves and fishes!

But what would have happened if that young boy, when he was asked for his loaves and fishes, had refused to give them because he felt that his paltry food was not worthy of Jesus?

Jesus "needed" that boy. In order to perform his miracle and feed his many followers, Jesus needed that boy’s consent

True, he could have made the bread and fish appear from thin air. But he generally chooses to work with what is ordinary and humanly possible. With the miracle at Cana, too, he chose to work with something simplec six stone jars of water.

This story of the loaves and fishes is a good example of the fact that God doesn’t just work with the most gifted and most holy people. He often calls instead the humble and the ordinary to be instruments of his grace.

And what about feeling unworthy? The great sinner Mary Magdalene certainly didn’t seem "worthy." But she said yes to God and stood by him at Calvary. And God rewarded her. According to Mark’s Gospel, it was this Mary who was privileged to be the first of the followers of Jesus to see him after he had risen from the dead.

The apostle Paul, too, felt himself to be unworthy. In the First Letter to the Corinthians, he says, I am the least of the apostles. In fact, since I persecuted the Church, I hardly deserve the name apostle (1 Cor 13:9-10).

However Paul recognized that God’s salvific powers makes all things new and that, however unworthy he was, Christ could still use him. And God did use himHto build his kingdom on earth in a way that has been unrivalled in two thousand years of Church history.

In our own time, we have the example of Dorothy Day, who appeared to be an unworthy woman. She was an agnostic who had had an abortion and a child out of wedlock. Yet she had a conversion experience and said yes to God’s call to serve the poor and pursue peace. Her cause is now up for canonization.

But when I think about someone who felt he wasn’t good enough to be called by God, I usually think of Thomas Merton whose books have inspired and continue to inspire countless people. Yet this revered monk had had to overcome initial doubts about his worthiness to enter religious life.

Feeling at first that God wanted him to be a Franciscan friar and priest, he applied to the novitiate of the Order of Friars Minor. But then, because of his sins before his conversion, he was wracked with doubts about his worthiness to enter that novitiate.

In his autobiography he wrote: "When I looked at myself in the light of this doubt, it began to appear utterly impossible that anyone in his right mind could consider me fit material for the priesthood." (Thomas Merton, Seven Story Mountain [Harbrace, 1990], p. 296)

Little did he dream that the story of his vocation would later inspire many to discover their own calling to the consecrated life.

We, too, each in our own way, have "loaves and fishes" that the Lord wants us to give. Are we willing to follow the example of the young boy and give it to him, however meager we think it is, to build up his kingdom on earth? Or, feeling that we are unworthy or that what we have to offer is not good enough, do we hold back?

If we give our "loaves and fishes," we probably won’t see a miracle. We may not even see results.

But whatever we give Jesus to work with, however paltry we think it is and however unworthy we feel ourselves to be, he uses to build his kingdom.

MH Vancouver

FATHERLESS NO MORE

In September 2002 the staff of MH Vancouver gave talks at a day of recollection for the priests of that diocese. The following are excerpted and adapted from these talks.

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In my latter years of high school I wrestled a lot with the question: does God exist? And who could he be in the kind of world we live in? In my grade twelve English class I even wrote a paper that exclaimed , "God is dead: Satan rules the universe." But though one part of me was beginning to believe this, another part of me couldn’t.

Then at some point during my first year of university, I came to the conclusion that God is real and exists somewhere.

But as for Jesus, well, he didn’t seem to matter much one way or another. He was just a man, a historical figure whom I had heard stories about. I could try to be like him, but I would never succeed because he was perfect. And, anyhow, he was really "beside the point."

Then later that year, with a world-weary heart, I arrived at Madonna House.

One of the first ways Christ used to reach me and bring me back to him was through the priesthood. He did this both in the Mass and the sacraments and through the priests themselves.

I saw in the priests that they didn’t just speak about a Jesus they’d read about or heard about or even hoped for. But in their prayers, words, and actions, I could see that they truly believed that Jesus Christ is real.

They spoke about a Jesus they knew, someone they experienced in their daily lives.

They also spoke about Christ’s love, a love without measure, and about his abundant mercy, a mercy that I was so in need of. I came to realize that he was their source of life, strength, grace, healing and renewal. Through them I was able to believe that he could be my source of these things, too.

In a sense the faith of the priests became a door through which I could walk to find again the living Christ who dwells within me.

I see and hear this living faith too in the priests of the diocese of Vancouver where, as a member of Madonna House, I am currently assigned.

And I saw and felt it very strongly in the pope during World Youth Day in Toronto. It wasn’t just the pope’s words that moved thousands of hearts. Even before he said anything, the radiance of his love and faith filled the atmosphere. My heart knew he was showing me the face of God.

I know now that Jesus is the point! He is the essence of the Christian faith and he is the total expression of the Father’s love for us. The good news is that he is present in my very flesh, and he desires to be in relationship with me.

Julie Coxe

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"Father" has been a recurring theme in my life. I was born and raised Catholic, and as a child I had a vibrant relationship with God the Father. I talked to him about everything. I also had a close relationship with my father.

Then when I was fifteen, everything changed. My father died. I was devastated and very angry at God. For my father died at a time when I most needed a father’s love, encouragement, and guidance.

For ten years I lived with the lie that I would forever be without a father’s strength and protection, that I would be forever fatherless.

Then one day when I was 24, I encountered a nun on a bus. She talked to me about God and as she was speaking, his love for me suddenly broke through to me, and I began sobbing. I heard God’s voice say in my heart, "Doreen, I love you. I want you to be happy. Give me a chance to make you happy."

This encounter with the living God was the beginning of a spiritual journey that took me to Madonna House a year later.

It was there that I learned the truth. It’s true that I can’t live without a father. I need God the Father. God knows my deepest needs, and he has found a beautiful way to give me himself. He gives me his tenderness and mercy through the priesthood.

At Madonna House, through interacting with priests in daily life, and through absorbing Catherine Doherty’s love for them, which is a charism of Madonna House, I developed a deep love and appreciation for priests.

Like all the staff and most of the long-term guests, I chose one of the priests to be my spiritual director. Even when I am in one of our mission houses, as I am now and have been for most of my fifteen years with Madonna House, I maintain contact with him by mail or, when necessary, by phone.

For I have come to know that if I am serious about living this vocation to be one with Christ and to love and serve him in everyone I meet, then I need major assistance. I cannot do it by myself.

And I have learned that one of the most direct ways of connecting with God’s truth, light, and peace is by drawing on the power of the priesthood.

I need the Eucharist. I need the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and I need to hear a word of life from a priest. And this doesn’t depend on the personality and gifts of the individual priest. It is the power of Christ’s love that comes through the priest.

God has chosen to give us Christ through your priesthood. Christ himself feeds us, heals us, strengthens and protects us through you. Be fathers to us and teach us how to live holy lives. Help us to become saints.

Doreen Dykers

Maryhouse Yukon

FAR FROM RETIRED

By Kay O’Shea

Every Monday afternoon, just before 5 o’clock, Fr. Joe Guilbaud arrives at Maryhouse to offer Mass and to join us for supper. I look forward to these visits.

Fr. Joe, an Oblate from France, has spent more than 55 years as a missionary in the Yukon. Now "retired," he lives across the street from us at the Oblate Center. But at 88, he is far from retired. He is working on indexing the writings of St. Faustina according to subject.

Then when this work is finished, in a few months he hopes, if his computer doesn’t give him too much trouble, he has another project in mind. He tells us that he doesn’t have enough time in a day.

Fr. Joe loves Christ and he loves the Mass. Small in stature, he is very big in heart and mind. He usually has a few notes for his homily, and more often than not, he tells us a story about St. Faustina.

"Want to be holy?" he asks. "Everyone can, you know. Just do everything for the love of God." Then he laughs, as if to say I know what this means. I know what it costs.

One week to use for part of his homily Fr. Joe brought a page of the catechism he has written, a catechism he worked on for many years. He color-coded it, and it can be used by anyone. Literate or illiterate, adult or child, everyone can understand it. He used it in the missions. He knows.

At supper, Fr. Joe is quiet—unless we get him talking about his growing up, or his life in the missions, or the mercy of God (a favorite topic of his), or his beloved St. Faustina.

Last week we mentioned that some Knights of Columbus were coming to split and stack wood for us, and that they would use a log splitter. Fr. Joe told us that at some point when he was in the missions, he got a chain saw, but he preferred an ordinary axe.

"Sometimes you have to move fast," he said, "and you can’t do it with a chain saw. With an axe, nothing holds you back." "One day I felled a hundred trees," he said, matter-of-factly but proudly. "And I got thirteen cords of wood from them."

When supper is finished, Fr. Joe says grace, then gets up from the table, and walks across the street. Sometimes we see him out walking or, in the warmer months, taking care of the flowers in his little garden.

His life, which was hidden in the wilderness of the Yukon for so many years, continues to be hidden. But it speaks volumes.

THE OTHER 2%

by Fr. Stéphane Pouliot

I am a new priest, ordained on May 24, 2003. A month after my ordination, I attended a youth conference where I ran into a young woman I knew, a member of a lay community (not Madonna House), who told me I should stay for the whole five days of the conference and not just for three as I had planned.

Somehow I knew that God was speaking through her, telling me to stay. And suddenly I felt really scared. When I told her this, she asked, "Who are you afraid of?" "God," I answered. She advised me to go and pray in the little tent where the Blessed Sacrament was exposed.

So I went, but the tent was empty. It was lunchtime, and the Blessed Sacrament had been removed, but there was an opened Bible on a stand. Curious, I went to see which page it was opened to. I could not have been more shocked. I had opened to Isaiah 5, the Song of the Vineyard. In it God tells how he had given everything to his vineyard (the House of Israel), to grow and be fruitful, but despite all his care and effort, it had remained fruitless.

So I began a dialogue with God. "God," I said, "I know why I’m scared. It’s because you want me to give you something more, something I haven’t given you yet."

Then in my heart, I heard God whisper, "Yes, I do want something more of you. So far you’ve only given me 98% of your life. You’re holding on to the other 2% so that you can have control over something."

It was true. I was afraid that if I gave God the other 2%, I would run the risk of becoming one of those religious fanatics or extremists, the kind of people who become suicide bombers or who knows what else.

Then the light came on. What kind of God did I believe in? If he was the kind of God who would make me go "nuts," I’d better stop believing in him. Then it dawned on me that people don’t become religious fanatics because of God but because of a mental problem.

Then I had another thought. The devil, who never had an original thought, sometimes possesses people. Was he imitating something he had seen God do? Was it possible to be possessed by the Holy Spirit? My heart said, "yes." Weren’t the mystics like St. Teresa of Avila, Saint Faustina Kowalska, St John of the Cross, and St. Francis of Assisi possessed by the Holy Spirit?

I surrendered. I said, "Holy Spirit of God, possess me." And I continued repeating this simple prayer from time to time during the day. (Actually I repeated it throughout the whole conference, which I decided to attend for the full five days.)

The day after this experience I realized that God would not possess me for more than one day at a time. And the next thing I knew God was telling me that if I asked him to possess me at 6 in the morning, I could still take back 50% of my life by noon.

I had received an important insight. Saints are possessed by the Holy Spirit, but not in the way it would be by the devil, not in a slavish and dangerous way. Rather saints give their lives to God at every moment of the day, every day of their lives.

I want to be a great saint, a saint who leads people to participate in the great plan of the Father "to restore all things in Christ."

FIFTY YEARS A PRIEST

by Fr. Emile-Marie Brière

The author, who died recently, was one of our first Madonna House priests. The following is adapted from his words at the 50th anniversary of his priesthood.

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La Fond, Alberta, around 1923:

The archbishop of Edmonton is sitting on the rectory’s big chair. I am about six years old and he has sat me on his knee. "Do you want to be a priest?" he asks. "Yes, I do," I answer. "I want to be a Jesuit." Surprised, he asks, "Why?" I answer fearlessly, "Because they are priests of Jesus." A pained look comes over his face, and he says, "And who do you think we are?"

Calder (Edmonton), Alberta, early 1930s:

A young man faints in school. The reason: malnourishment. The family has had only potatoes to eat for the last two weeks.

I ponder this event and realize that, on the one hand, wheat is being left to rot in the fields, while on the other, people are going hungry! This strikes me as an anomaly.

I ask myself, Who shall correct this wrong? The answer: Lay people. Who shall tell the lay people about this injustice? Who shall inspire them to do something about it?" The answer: Priests.

At that moment is born my vocation to the lay apostolate—to be a priest of the lay apostolate.

Edmonton, Alberta, Jesuit College, 1934:

During a decision retreat, it is discerned that my vocation is to the diocesan priesthood, not to the Jesuits.

Quebec City, my last summer "in the world," 1936:

I live it up, partying nearly every night until the wee hours since I am convinced that entering the seminary is nearly equal to entering the cemetery. In my mind, life in the rectory is dull, boring, spent mostly in edifying conversations with pious people.

St. Joseph’s Seminary, Edmonton, Albert, 1936-1940:

It’s really not too bad. There are some fine, interesting professors, invaluable friendships, and lots of time for research, and for studying my favorite subject—history. Why history? I’d been asking myself, How did we get this way? History provides a lot of answers.

Ordination day, June 23, 1940:

Archbishop John MacDonald has just imposed hands upon me and anointed my hands of clay. The master of ceremonies leads me to the sacristy and says, "Wash your hands, Father." The immense weight I’ve been carrying, namely the fear of a dull, boring life as a priest, lifts completely, never to return. A new life, a new enthusiasm, a new power takes hold of me.

Harlem, New York, August 1940:

Catherine de Hueck kneels on the street and says, "Give my your blessing, Father." Her faith in the priesthood reinforces my own faith mightily and sustains me all through my priestly life.

Clyde, Alberta, September 1940:

I sit in the confessional for the first time. My first penitent is over a hundred years old—77 years older than I am.

My first baptisms are the children of the local bootlegger, and my first marriage, the people who have been shacked up and living hidden in the bush. My first Extreme Unction, as we used to say, is an attempted suicide. (She lived to a ripe old age.)

Morinville, Alberta, November 1940:

We’ve managed to organize seventeen study clubs on adult education, cooperatives, credit unions, and a couple on topics of special interest to youth. This makes me realize how good people are, how willing to help each other.

Several people open their hearts to me and I begin spiritual direction. My first directee is a very holy young nun. A local farmer teaches me about True Devotion to Mary according to St. Louis DeMontfort. My pastor gives me a lot of wise counsel.

September 1941:

I am appointed to the staff of St. Joseph’s Seminary. I teach Logic, Latin, and Homiletics.

Overlooking the Saskatchewan River Valley, September 1942:

I have been asked to become chaplain of the Young Christian Students Group. I have attended several meetings, and I feel increasingly uncomfortable. These girls are taking their religion seriously. They want to be Christians. They want to be apostles. They want to become saints.

Over several years, I have been discovering among young people a burning desire to love God and serve their neighbor. It is a great joy to see the Holy Spirit so much alive and at work in so many, many people. It is clear that now I have to make a choice either to live a cushy, bourgeois life, or to take God seriously.

Madonna House, Combermere, 1955:

I come to Combermere where I am intimately associated with Catherine Doherty and with the priests, laymen and lay women who form the lay apostolate of Madonna House. I see a new civilization in the making based on essential truths: God loves me passionately. I can love him back passionately. I can lay down my life for others by humble service.

Combermere, 1955 – 1990:

I have discovered that the white martyrdom is lived out here—joyfully, relentlessly. The battle between good and evil is sometimes fierce—always present. In this battle, priestly spiritual power is eminent.

Combermere, 1990,the fiftieth anniversary of my priesthood:

As I prostrate myself in thanksgiving and adoration; as I thank Our Lady for her presence and constant care, I also remember, with unspeakable gratitude, the hundreds of generous people—priests, nuns, laymen, laywomen, who have sustained the priesthood of Jesus Christ in me by their love, their fidelity, their faith, their hope, their prayer.

Excerpted from The Power of Love, pp. 153

The Pope’s Corner

THE CHURCH’S GREATEST WEALTH

by Pope John Paul II

The following is excerpted from the homily given in the Chapel of the Cenacle during the pope’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land in March 2000. This chapel was built on what ancient tradition holds to be the site of the Upper Room where the Last Supper was celebrated and Jesus instituted the sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance, and Holy Orders.

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This is my Body, which will be given up for you. It is with deep emotion that we listen once more to these words spoken here in this Upper Room 2000 years ago.

Since then they have been repeated, generation after generation, by those who share in the priesthood of Christ through the sacrament of Holy Orders. In this way, Christ himself constantly says these words anew, through the voice of his priests in every corner of the world.

By your cross and resurrection you have set us free. You are the Savior of the world. At every Holy Mass, we proclaim this "mystery of faith," which for two millennia has nourished and sustained the Church as she makes her pilgrim way amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God, proclaiming the cross and death of the Lord until he comes.

The Eucharist is both a banquet of communion in the new and everlasting Covenant and the sacrifice which makes present the saving power of the Cross.

Whenever the words "This is my Body" and the invocation of the Holy Spirit are pronounced, the Church is strengthened in the faith of the Apostles and in the unity which has the Holy Spirit as its origin and bond.

St. Paul, the Apostle of the Nations, saw clearly that the Eucharist, as our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ, is also a mystery of spiritual communion in the Church. We, many though we are, are one body, for we all partake of the same bread (1 Cor 10:17). In the Eucharist Christ the Good Shepherd, who gave his life for the sheep, remains present in his Church.

What is the Eucharist if not the sacramental presence of Christ in all who share in the one bread and the one cup? This presence is the Church’s greatest wealth.

Through the Eucharist, Christ builds up the Church. The hands which broke bread for the disciples at the Last Supper were to be stretched out on the cross in order to gather all people to himself in the eternal kingdom of his Father. Through the celebration of the Eucharist, he never ceases to draw men and women to be effective members of his Body.

Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. This is the "mystery of faith" which we proclaim in every celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus Christ, the priest of the new and eternal Covenant, has redeemed the world by his blood.

Risen from the dead, he has gone to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. In the Spirit who has made us God’s beloved children, in the unity of the Body of Christ, we await his return with joyful hope.

Celebrating this Eucharist in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, we are united with the Church of every time and place. United with the Head, we are in communion with Peter and the Apostles and their successors down the ages.

In union with Mary, the saints and martyrs, and all the baptized who have lived in the grace of the Holy Spirit, we cry out, Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!" (cf. Rv 22:17). Bring us, and all your chosen ones, to the fullness of grace in your eternal kingdom. Amen.

KEEPING OUR PRIESTS

by Christopher Zakrzewski

About ten years ago, at the end of an unusually cold winter, we were shocked and saddened to hear of the sudden departure from the priesthood of the pastor of the neighboring parish.

He was a former pastor of ours, and we remembered him as a somewhat distant but gifted teacher and a deliverer of pithy, meticulously executed homilies. After a brief farewell address to his flock one Sunday morning, he departed quietly. Not long after that, we heard that he was married in a non-Catholic church not far from our town.

The event raised a bit of a flap in our quiet, seemingly unflappable rural Ontario deanery. Most parishioners expressed bewilderment and confusion.

Some were alarmed (needlessly) by the possibility of having received invalid sacraments at the hands of an apostasizing priest.

Others (more predictably) were scandalized by what they considered to be an instance of the "insensitivity" of the Church hierarchy that will not budge from its discipline of priestly celibacy, thus "dooming" its ordained ministers to a life of loneliness and emotional starvation.

In his departing address Father X himself made reference to the problem of loneliness in a priest’s life. It is not my place here to comment on his reasons and motives for leaving.

It would be in order, however, to use his remark as a springboard to reflect on the difficult role of the parish priest in our fragmented communities and to think about what we as laity can do to alleviate some of the stresses that wrack their lives.

To put it plainly, many of our parish priests are showing the strain of marginalization within their parishes (or remnants of parishes). What this means in human terms, a friend recently characterized quite well.

She told my wife how on New Year’s Day her husband suggested inviting the fiddle-playing pastor of a neighboring parish to the house to celebrate the holiday with the family. She replied that there was no way that a pastor would be alone and unengaged on New Year’s Day.

Her husband asked the pastor anyhow, and sure enough, he was alone. No one had thought of inviting him—and this was a priest who was known to suffer from severe bouts of loneliness and depression.

Of course, he was only too delighted to come to their house, and come with his fiddle he did. They all had a roaring good time.

The fact is that there are parishes that are notoriously indifferent to their parish priests. And even in parishes with conscientious, caring families, the tempo of modern living often prevents them from extending the hospitality they would like to. However if we wish to keep our priests, we must somehow find the will and the time to treat them as members of our families—for that is what they really are.

John Paul II tells us that priests "must unceasingly act towards families as fathers, brothers, pastors, and teachers, assisting them with the means of grace and enlightening them with the light of truth."

He adds that "their responsibility extends not only to moral and liturgical matters but to personal and social matters as well. They must support the family in its difficulties and sufferings, caring for its members and helping them to see their lives in the light of the Gospel.

It is not superfluous to note that from this mission the minister of the Church draws fresh encouragement and spiritual energy for his own vocation too and for the exercise of his ministry" (Familiaris Consortio, n. 73).

This process is a two-way street. In order for our priests to draw strength for their own vocation, families must care for and support them in their difficulties and sufferings.

Priests are not Robinson Crusoes. The Sacrament of Holy Orders does not automatically confer upon them the charism of hermits in the desert. There is nothing supernatural about them when it comes to their need for the give and take of human interaction.

Parishioners of today have no choice but to rally around their remaining embattled priests. We must pitch in and support them in any way we can.

Faced with an apostasizing First World, the Church finds herself poised on the brink of a full scale "new evangelization." In fact, the signs are that she is already undertaking the Holy Father’s plan of re-evangelizing what is left of old Christendom.

Not since the onset of the first millennium has Christ’s dictum, the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few (Lk 10:2) taken on such an urgency. Our priests are already overworked, and their burden will only continue to increase.

Gone, moreover, are "the good old days" when our parish rectories housed sufficient numbers of priests to minister to a single coherent community. More and more, particularly in the rural areas, we must resign ourselves to the reality of one harried pastor servicing a number of disjointed communities.

In our chaotic urban centers and depersonalized suburbs the problems are often even more grave. All of this places an intolerable burden on our priests.

In two crucial areas, in the celebration of the Mass and the administering of the sacraments, Catholics will always depend on their priests. However, the writing is on the wall.

The laity is going to have to learn to become less dependent on their priests for many of the latter’s non-essential ministries. We the laity must be ready to take up the slack.

In his apostolic exhortation, The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People, John Paul II continually endorses the idea of pastors entrusting to the laity certain offices and roles connected to their pastoral ministry, offices and roles that do not require the character of Orders (Christifideles Laici, no. 23).

We must show our pastors that we are available and competent to take on such roles.

There are other tried and true ways in which we can support our priests. We ought of course to pray for them as never before.

So here’s an idea. How about forming local prayer groups to "adopt" a priest? The sole aim of such groups would be to pray for the intentions of a specific priest. Just think of the powerful graces that would flow to him! This is just one idea that has recently been implemented in many parishes in the United States and Canada.

We must also make a bigger effort to open our homes to our priests. Cook up some meals for him for the week and visit him at the rectory. Invite him home for dinner. Tell him he has a standing invitation to drop in at any timekand remember the importunate widow. Don’t take no for an answer.

When all else fails, use your little children as ambassadors. In one instance, after our invitations were repeatedly unsuccessful, our five and three-year-old sons managed to talk our pastor into coming to our house to watch a video.

Place your tots on Father’s lap. Pour him a cup of steaming coffee. Let him tinker on the family piano or guitar. Sing with him; joke with him.

Commend him on a good sermon, and make a special point to rally behind him when he preaches an unpopular but orthodox teaching of the Church.

In the process you might just be helping to turn your parish into what Pope John Paul II liked to call "a village fountain" a parish where both pastor and laity can draw "fresh encouragement and spiritual energy" for their complementary and intertwining ministries.

As time went on, the memory of our former pastor who succumbed to the pressure of loneliness in the final days of a cold winter grew dim. It is too late to give him the warmth of community he needed. But many lonely priests remain.

Let us remember them. This is not sentimentality. It is community in practice. And it will contribute highly to the preservation of our priests.

A PRAYER FOR PRIESTS

Beloved Father, please help all priests who are faithful to remain faithful. To those who are falling, stretch forth your divine hand that they may grasp it as their support. For the unfortunate priests who have fallen, lift them up to the great ocean of your mercy so that, being engulfed in it, they may receive the grace to return to your great loving heart. Amen.